> it’s fucking depressing when even the fucking bare minimum form of regulation is followed to the letter and no more, because every company out there fucking hates you and would sell you out to make a bit more money if they legally could. and even if they couldn’t, who’s going to stop them?

Certainly not any government. If you think the EU's regulation are of any help to the consumer you are gravely mistaken. The EU is quickly becoming a fucking nightmare to live in. "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws". The meme that goes around atm is that while Elon Musk created Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink the EU managed to get everybody to now have plastic bottles who do not close properly anymore: due to some regulation that mandates that bottle caps must hold to the bottle, weird only partially-functional mechanism have been created and it's a PITA to either drink from a plastic bottle or, worse, try to lay it horizontally in a fridge.

That's what the EU is: probably that some politicians or bureaucrats with enough brain cells to recognize a bottle cap on the ground thought "I've got an idea to make the EU better, let's mandate every bottle to have a cap that cannot be separated from the bottle".

As a result you lay horizontally a plastic bottle of sugary drink in your fridge (because you've been used to do that for decades) and now all your fridge is sticky due to the bottle leaking.

It's all that is wrong with the EU bureaucrats in one example.

Also hailing the EU as the savior vs Microsoft when our lives becames miserable with EU consent cookie popups virtually everywhere is a bit thick.

So the EU is bad because you can't learn to screw on a bottle cap that's different than before?

> while Elon Musk created Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink the EU [created] some regulation that mandates that bottle caps must hold to the bottle

At least the EU made something useful

Good grief if you’re biggest complaint about why the EU is a nightmare to live in because sometimes you get nasty soda all over your fridge then I think you might need to touch some grass.

> The meme that goes around atm is that while Elon Musk created Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink the EU managed to get everybody to now have plastic bottles who do not close properly anymore: due to some regulation that mandates that bottle caps must hold to the bottle, weird only partially-functional mechanism have been created and it's a PITA to either drink from a plastic bottle or, worse, try to lay it horizontally in a fridge.

I haven't encountered that meme, but if it exists, it's like most memes seem to be: Wrong. The bottle caps work just fine.